


There Earth Is Green With Tender Growth

by riventhorn



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Character, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M, but no bees sadly, farming and the georgics because it is lucius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 21:12:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14756405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riventhorn/pseuds/riventhorn
Summary: An alternate universe where Lucius survives, and he asks Hilarion to join him on his long-awaited farm. Hilarion accepts but finds farming--and Lucius--a bit more than he bargained for.





	There Earth Is Green With Tender Growth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chantefable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/gifts).



> I hope that you enjoy this, chantefable! It was tough to choose between your many excellent prompts (Beric's HEA with marsh drainage and menage a trois FTW!!). BUT, Hilarion/Lucius is my Sutcliff OTP, and I am all for happier endings where beloved characters do not die.
> 
> Many thanks to Isis for the beta.

They had been walking all morning, and Hilarion’s leg felt like Cerberus was gnawing on it, pain radiating out from his right knee. He’d pay two denarii to anyone who happened by with a hay cart for a ride, but the road remained stubbornly deserted. He could only hobble along, leaning heavily on his crutch and cursing the Votadini who had stabbed him in the knee. By rights, the bastard had been killed at Bremenium, but if not, he prayed Mercury would drive him to the greatest death, allowing neither health nor sleep for the remainder of his wretched life.

Then they finally crested the last hill, and Hilarion decided praying to the gods was a worthless endeavor, because clearly every single one of them was laughing at his expense.

The farm that was supposed to be their reward for their loyal service to the Emperor was nothing more than a huddle of dilapidated huts on a patch of rocky soil. 

“You’re certain this is it?” he asked Lucius.

Lucius nodded.

“But where are the—the bees and the flowers and the grape vines that you were always nattering about from reading those scrolls?” 

“We’ll have to cultivate them,” Lucius replied. “Vineyards don’t magically appear this far north, you know.” He was hiding a smile, the son of a goat.

“Cultivate them,” Hilarion repeated. He unstoppered the jug of wine that had been thumping against his hip and took a drink. Then he laughed. He laughed so hard that he had to sit down on one of the nearby rocks—a large specimen that probably had spawned the thousands of other rocks that Lucius would want to dig out of the soil. Lucius probably wanted to fix the roof of the barn and repair the fences too. Lucius, who no longer had a left arm. 

Oh, this was droll. He had to admit that, even if the joke was on them. Two veterans of the Auxiliaries, one with only one arm and the other with a lame leg, granted a farm that neither of them were capable of working. 

He laughed a little longer and then took another drink. 

Lucius had been standing quietly beside him this whole time, waiting for Hilarion to calm down and behave like a rational man again. “I know it doesn’t look like much now,” he said. “But with time, it will.”

Hilarion corked the wine and allowed Lucius to help haul him back on his feet. “Ah yes, I am sure it will be the wonder of the surrounding countryside.”

Lucius surely heard the sarcasm in his tone but chose to ignore it, gazing instead at the hills, brushed with the soft green of spring, anticipation lighting his eyes. He did not let go of Hilarion either, instead sliding his arm across Hilarion’s shoulders in a half-embrace and tilting his head so his hair brushed against Hilarion’s cheek for a moment. “We’ll make it a splendid home,” he whispered. Then he let go of Hilarion, and moved ahead. 

Hilarion stumbled a step forward, and then his crutch went into a hole, and he almost cracked his jaw on it. Lucius had never touched him in such an openly affectionate way before. It left him wrong-footed, unsure what to say or do. 

In the end he said nothing, and they resumed their hobbling pace. As they drew closer to the derelict farm, Hilarion wondered again why in Jupiter's name he was here when he could have been sitting comfortably in a wine shop in Londinium. 

But Lucius had asked him, as they lay in the hospital at Onnum. Lucius, his face drawn with pain and flushed with fever, talking quietly about sheep and barley and the sweet smell of new grass. 

"I've always wanted to have a little piece of the land," Lucius had whispered. "A place to tend and cultivate and call my own."

"I know." Hilarion wiped Lucius's brow with a cool cloth. "Haven't I had to listen to you recite your verses about bees and the like all these years? Now hush and rest quietly." 

But Lucius would not rest. His eyes were fever-bright as he grasped Hilarion's hand. "Come with me. It would be good—very good—to have you there."

Hilarion scoffed and freed his fingers. "That's the poppy juice they drugged you with talking."

"No," Lucius contradicted, his face solemn. And his hand rested on Hilarion's bandaged knee, a soft, gentle touch. "It is in my heart that you should be with me, Hilarion. Please." 

Hilarion had long thought that Lucius was a very difficult man to refuse. Those dark eyes fixed upon you, and suddenly you found yourself agreeing to help fresh-faced recruits mend their saddles, or sharing the fish meant for your supper with a red-haired trumpeter's kitten, or moving to a farm near Glevum that consisted of little more than rocks and grass and tumble-down sheds. 

*  
That night they slept in the remains of the cow byre, their cloaks spread over the heap of branches and musty hay they had gathered as a makeshift bed. But the remains of the roof did keep them dry when a squall passed over in the mid-watches of the night, blotting out the stars, the ground flashing white in the crackles of lightning. 

It had ended by morning, and the sun shone, mist rising from the damp grass. Hilarion squinted over the edge of his cloak with one eye and then pressed a bit closer to Lucius's warmth. No commander to come yell at him for lying abed anymore. He could sleep until noon if he wanted. But then Lucius shifted and made to rise. 

"No," Hilarion mumbled, clutching at him. "Sleep a bit more." 

Lucius huffed a laugh, his breath stirring Hilarion's hair. "You have lazy bones, don't you?"

"You know that I do."

Calloused fingers carded through his hair. "Do you hear the blackbird calling?"

"Indecent bird, up with the sun."

Somehow he could feel Lucius's amused smile, even though his eyes were closed. Lucius’s hand in his hair was calming, consisting of steady, soft strokes. He could not recall ever being touched in such a manner. The women and occasional boy he’d lain with had mostly been interested in his coin, and he had never cultivated any deeper relationships, knowing that he’d be moved along to another post and commander as soon as the current one tired of his blunt tongue. 

"Before we begin work today, I will ask God to bless our land that it may be fruitful," Lucius said after a few minutes had passed. He removed his hand, and Hilarion bit back a protest. 

"Ask him to re-thatch the roof while you are at it,” he said instead, and rolled onto his back, blinking up at the shadowed rafters. "I don't know how we will manage it otherwise."

"I shall hire a boy or two from one of the nearby farms. And we must see about getting a cow and some chickens as well." 

Lucius did get up then, ignoring Hilarion’s grumblings. Pulling his cloak up to his chin, he continued to lie there, watching as Lucius assembled kindling in the patch of ground they had cleared. He was getting better at managing with the one arm. 

Was that why he had asked Hilarion to come with him? Hilarion, who knew nothing at all about farming, who knew his way around horses but little else to do with caring for beasts and growing barley and corn. But perhaps even his incompetence seemed attractive when one suddenly became crippled. 

There were other possible reasons too, of course. The sensation of Lucius’s fingers in his hair returned. He’d never seen Lucius with one of the native women. But he’d never seen him with one of the men either, in the Ordo or out. He’d never touched Hilarion in anything but a brotherly manner—until yesterday, and now again this morning. 

“How do you suppose the Commander is getting on with his Attacotti?” Hilarion said as they ate their porridge and raisins. 

“I should imagine he is managing quite well. He is no longer the green cub who arrived at Castellum.”

“He is not,” Hilarion agreed, thinking of Alexios, of the tell-tale jerk of his shoulders and the determination in his eyes. 

Lucius set down his bowl and poked at the fire with a stick. “It would have been good to continue watching over him.”

“Ah, well. He is probably glad we are out of his hair. Or at least glad that I am. I suppose he would have no objection to you.”

“I do not think he would object to you, either,” Lucius contradicted quietly.

“Perhaps not. But in any case, _you_ are the one who ended up with me.”

“So I did.” Lucius smiled, a small, private expression that did not answer any of Hilarion’s questions. 

*

They made the rounds to their neighbors that day, looking for any likely boys or young men interested in making a bit of money. They found a few, as well as a number of women who seemed to like clucking over Lucius’s missing arm, who gave him sweet breads and fresh cheese to take home. Hilarion saved his smiles for the maidens, who giggled and asked shyly if his wound had come in a battle. 

“I did not know it was you who saved us all from the Votadini,” Lucius said as they left the last farm. “I suppose I had forgotten that the Commander and I were taking our ease during that last battle, sipping spiced wine and admiring your prowess with a sword.”

“Becoming forgetful, are you?” Hilarion replied with mock concern, and Lucius’s mouth trembled with a threatened laugh. 

With the remaining light, they did their best to begin sorting through the bits of fallen and scattered wood about the place, setting aside usable pieces and making a pile of the rest for the fire. At last, the ache in Hilarion’s leg became too much, and he sat down in the grass with a huff and a grimace. The pain turned his stomach sour. 

“Here,” Lucius said, pouring him a cup of wine and sweetening it with honey from a small jar. 

“We should save it,” Hilarion protested. “Who knows when we’ll get more.” 

“You need it.” He handed the cup to Hilarion and then fumbled among their bags and pouches on the ground. “The surgeon gave me some silphium before we left. I can make a paste and—”

“No,” Hilarion interrupted, and Lucius paused. “No,” he repeated. “The pain is not that bad. We should save the medicine for… for when it becomes so.” He did not care to think of how it would be when the weather turned and became damp and cold.

Lucius nodded and rested his hand on Hilarion’s shoulder.

*

The work was hard and unrelenting. He’d known arduous tasks before of course—no one would call life in the Auxiliaries easy—but he’d been fit then. Now his lame leg dragged at him, leaching his energy and his skill, making every simple movement a struggle. 

Lucius was in the same boat, of course, but Lucius had always wanted this life. He had dreamed about when his soldiering days were over, making plans, imagining his farm. In truth, Hilarion had never given much thought to the days after—after battles and war, the routine of life at a fort, of drills and marching. If pressed, he’d have said he’d probably die before having to worry about it. 

But now he wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t old. Instead he was crippled and trying to till the thin soil so they could plant beans and barley and corn. 

“Thou shalt with ceaseless rake the weeds pursue,” Lucius quoted, and Hilarion thought that Virgil should have put in something about the endless rocks that met the blade of his hoe. 

Luckily, some of the neighboring lads had agreed to help rethatch the roof of the house and repair the walls. They seemed as eager to hear their stories of the thrilling retreat from Castellum as to receive a few coins for their efforts. Lucius had even told a few older tales, of their time in the Legions in Germania, and of his boyhood in Rome. The lads listened with wide eyes and open mouths, and Hilarion found himself curious too. Lucius had never been particularly forthcoming about his past—although perhaps that was only because Hilarion had never asked. Few of the men in the Third Ordo had been eager to discuss their previous lives. 

“So you are the son of a potter, then,” Hilarion said that night as they sat under the new roof, the fire crackling in the hearth instead of in a ring of stones in the yard. 

“The third son, yes.”

“It seems a… more fitting profession for you than soldiering.”

“My father’s business was small, and my older brothers both followed in the trade. With two families, in addition to my parents, and our little sister—I would have been a burden had I stayed.”

“Why not a priest? Or apprenticing yourself to a merchant or a physician?”

“I will begin to think you doubted my qualities as a soldier.”

Hilarion scowled and shifted, hitching his blanket more securely over his shoulder. “That is not so. It is only that… that I have always thought you too….”

“Too what?” Lucius probed.

Regretting he had ever raised the subject, he muttered, “Too gentle,” and hoped Lucius would blame the flush on his cheeks to the heat from the fire. 

A soft laugh. “Ah. Well. You are not entirely wrong. But the truth is that I have always wanted to farm the land, and this was the only sure path to acquiring some of my own.” 

“So it all comes down to your damn bees and wheat stalks.”

“I suppose so.” 

Hilarion snorted. He wondered uneasily if Lucius would probe into his own past, a topic he had no interest in dredging up from where he had shoved it into the far corners of his mind. 

But Lucius only poked at the fire and said, “The hearth is glad to feel warmth again.”

“Aye. We must coddle the household gods for a time, I think. They are surely in a foul mood to have been abandoned for so long.”

“Foul? I should say lonely.”

 _Lonely._ The word struck against a tender place near his heart. Propping his head on his elbow, he kept his tone deliberately light as he asked, “And is that why you asked me to come with you? So you would not be lonely?” 

Lucius smiled in that quiet way he had. “It is true I wanted company. But more than that, it was because I did not want to be apart from you.” 

It stole the breath from him. 

“May I ask why you agreed to my request?” Lucius continued, dark eyes solemn. 

Why had he? At the time, overcome with relief that Lucius was not dead and half-dazed from the pain in his leg, he had only choked out, “If that is what you wish.” 

“Because,” he began, his tongue thick around the word, and then found he could not continue. “Because otherwise I’d have spent all my coin in a wine shop in Londinium and ended up a wretched beggar on the streets,” he finally said, regretting ever beginning this conversation. 

“I see,” Lucius said, and his mouth turned down at the corners.

He did not want to cause Lucius any pain. But how could he speak the truth when he did not know what Lucius wanted from him? Or what he himself desired to give?

That night he lay awkward and stiff at Lucius’s side, unable to press closer for warmth as he had done before. He could tell Lucius was still awake too. 

Eventually, Lucius rolled over to face him, and Hilarion braced himself.

“How is your leg?” Lucius asked.

He had not anticipated that question, and he answered honestly, “Sore and stiff. It does not take kindly to hoeing rocks.” 

“There are fewer rocks than there were before.”

Hilarion grunted. Perhaps this was true. 

“I am sorry the work is so hard,” Lucius said after a moment.

He shrugged. “It is no fault of yours.” 

“No, but I—” Lucius stopped and sighed. 

A few moments later, Lucius put a tentative hand on Hilarion’s arm. “The night is cold.”

“Aye, so it is,” Hilarion mumbled, and he moved closer until his taller frame wrapped around Lucius, tucked against his chest. He expected Lucius to do… something more. But Lucius only sighed, content now, and fell asleep, leaving Hilarion awake and uneasy in the dark. 

*

He slept poorly and woke in an ill mood. For a moment, he found himself missing Castellum, where the cook would be preparing breakfast and subordinates hauling water and chopping wood. Here, they must do all those things themselves. 

If he’d had a choice between running ten miles in full kit and hoeing a field, he thought he might pick the former. But he couldn’t run anymore, and so it was a moot point. 

When they were eating the morning meal, he snapped at Lucius for making the fire too smoky. “And you’ve burned the porridge again,” he added.

“I am sorry,” Lucius said, subdued. “I am still learning the trick of managing it with my one hand.”

He should apologize too, for unthinking words said in haste. Instead, he went outside to lean against the wall in the sunshine. Lucius could not expect him to be pleasant all the time. 

*

Two days later, Lucius told him that he had met their neighbor, Eisu, the evening before. Eisu planned to take a trip into Glevum that day with his horse and cart. 

“Go with him,” Lucius said, pressing some coin in Hilarion’s hand. “We need oil for the lamp and some more salt would not go amiss.”

His spirits rose at the thought of a day in town—a chance to hear the news over a dice game or two, perhaps indulge in a cup of quality wine. But—

“Our tunics will not wash themselves. It is no easy task to lug everything down to the river.”

Lucius did not look up from where he was bent over, laboriously tying the laces on his sandals. “I can manage it.” 

Hilarion hesitated, but his heart admittedly leapt at the chance to avoid the drudgery of laundering in the cold river. So he pushed the guilt away and went with Eisu to Glevum. 

A bustle of people and animals filled the market. He acquired the necessary items easily enough, bargaining down the fat old man selling salt at an atrocious price and grinning when he cursed Hilarion for taking the bread from his poor children’s mouths. The sight of some yellowing scrolls tucked in one stall’s corner did give him pause, and he almost went to see if there were any that Lucius might fancy—religious tracts or farming advice or some other equally dull subject. When it came to literary materials, most of the men in the Third Ordo had preferred the tablets and scrolls scrawled with coarse jokes, stories, and pictures. No great skill in reading had been required for those, and they had been passed around the barracks until everyone had them memorized. 

Almost everyone—Lucius had always been different in that too, preferring his fancy scrolls and dreams of bees and farms. Irrational anger surged in Hilarion at the thought, and he strode past the scrolls without another glance. 

He found a wine shop instead—a cheap one, as befitted the state of his purse. Only one cup, he told himself, but one soon turned to three. He joined a dice game, winning a bit, then losing, then winning again. He ordered more wine and some meat, the tender lamb juicy and rich on his tongue after weeks of porridge and hard bread. 

Lucius would be angry with him, he knew. But Lucius wouldn’t yell—no, he’d only look at him with his dark, disappointed eyes and say quietly that they could wait until next year to buy a goat. 

Well, Lucius wasn’t here, was he? If he’d come along, he could have had wine and meat too. And anyway, he should have known what he was getting into when he asked Hilarion to come with him to the farm in the first place. If he decided Hilarion was too much trouble, he could tell him to leave. Or Hilarion could leave—leave the cold and hard work behind and go somewhere soft and warm where his leg wouldn’t ache as badly. 

_I did not want to be apart from you._

Lucius’s words—and damn him for saying that. If he could say that, then why couldn’t he tell Hilarion what he _wanted_ from him?

He had a vague memory of agreeing with Eisu to meet him in midafternoon to return to the farm. But by the time he remembered, the sun was going down, and it seemed a better idea to have another cup of wine instead. 

At last his coin ran out, and soon after the shopkeeper kicked him out into the street. Drunk, he stumbled along, heedless, and never even saw the wooden crate lying abandoned on the road until he crashed into it and fell. He landed on his bad leg, and the pain of it burned through the fog of the wine, turning his stomach. He vomited, and then managed to drag himself off to the side to huddle against a hut. 

How much time passed, he didn’t know. He felt too weak and sick to move, every little shift sending jolts of agony up his leg. 

Then candlelight touched his face, and there was a rustle of cloth, warm fingers pressed against his neck, and Lucius’s voice, shaky with relief and concern, “Hilarion? What has happened? Are you injured?”

He cracked open his eyes, wincing. “Lucius?”

“Aye. When you did not return, I thought—” Lucius swallowed, his mouth pressed into a grim line. “I was worried about you, with your leg.”

“I got drunk and fell,” he said, the shame of it acute. 

But Lucius only let out a long breath, eyes bright, fumbling for some water and a soft cloth, and cleaned Hilarion’s face. Gentle hands touched his leg, his hair. 

It was too much, and a dry sob heaved in his chest. “Why?” he asked, his voice cracking. “Why are you doing this? Why do you want me with you?”

Lucius sighed, and he sat down next to him in the hard dirt, their shoulders touching. “Did I not tell you that I could not bear to be apart?”

“But _why_? Because you want my dry wit? Or is it more?”

There was a long pause. Hilarion’s leg and head throbbed in tandem, and he thought he might be sick again. 

“Because I love you,” Lucius said at last, the words simple and quiet. 

No one had ever loved him. Perhaps his mother, in the scant few hours she lived after his birth. But then it had been a succession of unwilling relatives, who either slapped and beat him or ignored him, then the rough life of the Legions. He had never been treated gently. Until Lucius. 

“You don’t want to fuck me. You’d have done it by now—I’d let you. But you don’t, and I—I don’t understand what you want.”

Lucius looked away. “I’ve never felt those urges.. With my God, this is not a bad thing. There are holy men who forsake marriage and physical lust. But I should like to hold you, and kiss your temple and cheek, and tend to your leg, and—and _love_ you, if you’ll let me.” 

He turned into Hilarion then, gripping him with his one hand, face buried against his throat, desperate, as though he thought Hilarion would get up and walk away and leave him. 

“These are not new feelings,” Hilarion said slowly, reflexively bringing up a hand to cup Lucius’s head and his close-shorn curls. 

“No,” Lucius admitted, his voice small and soft. “But in our position—the Wolves would not have understood. They knew fucking and fighting and… and I could not afford to appear weak, and nor could you.”

Hilarion did not know what to say. , His heart seemed to beat so loudly in his chest that it overcame the throbbing in his leg.

“To keep you with me now—it’s selfish of me, I know,” Lucius continued, voice muffled. “You must want a wife and sons, and here I have dragged you to that awful farm where you must work so hard with little respite, and I can offer you nothing in return.”

That broke through his shock. “It is not awful,” he said, and his voice was so sharp that Lucius pulled back slightly, surprised. “Do not dare call it so. Not when I know how much it means to you.”

“But we have so little, and the land is poor. It will never offer an easy or a rich life.” Lucius drew a deep breath, and Hilarion could see the tears on his cheeks shining in the lamplight. “If you wished it, I would give it up. We could go south—back to Rome. Or… or if you did not wish to stay with me, you could—”

“Stop,” he said, the word harsh, cutting across Lucius’s mumbled, halting surrender. “ _Stop_ ,” he repeated and dragged Lucius back against him, into the circle of his arms. 

“I do not care about having a wife, although I cannot promise I won’t lie with a woman now and then,” he continued after a few moments. He slumped against the wall of the hut, looking up at the pinprick stars. Lucius trembled against him, and Hilarion found his hand, squeezing their cold fingers together. “I do not know how to love someone. But… but I should like to learn, with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is, of course, from the Georgics.


End file.
